Rejoicing in the Sacred

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.  Lent is a season leading up to Good Friday and Easter in which it is traditional in the Christian world to “give up” something.

We in New Thought are not so attracted to sacrifice.  Perhaps we would be if we remembered that the meaning of the word sacrifice is “to make sacred.”  And we know that each of us has something in our lives which could more fully express its sacredness.  So with this period of focus known as Lent, we dedicate ourselves to realizing the sacred in every aspect of our lives.

Knowing that the temporal is temporary, that conditions exist, as Eliot notes, only for one time and only for one place, we rejoice in the way things are in that sacred adventure called life, knowing that as we recognize the sacred perfection of what is, which is perfect for what we are to do and be and where we are to go, we sacrifice all that is unlike the perfection of our lives.  We rejoice that things are as they are, knowing that our rejoicing makes sacred and perfects every condition we experience.

Charles Fillmore, the co-founder of Unity, refers to Lent as “the season of prayer and fasting that precedes the joyous festivity of Easter.”  As we pray, let us fast from negative ideas, from complaint, from all that turns us away from making everything sacred, from making every moment holy, and from rejoicing in things as they are.

Let us remember that “everything is holy now” and “fast” from any other outlook, from any other idea.

And so, in this season of prayer, we pray.

There is only One Life.  That Life is God’s Life, that Life is perfect, and that Life is my life now.  That One Life, in all, as all, through all, expresses in, as, through, and all around each of us as it does in the perfect flow of Divine Law and Divine Love.

As the expression of that One Life, I rejoice.  I express the Joy of God; I am that Joy.  That Joy fills my being because it is the Truth of who and what I am.

In that Joy, I rejoice that things are as they are.  I let that Joy fill each and every moment, each and every circumstance in my life with rejoicing, with the perfect expression of Itself, and I radiate that expression, that rejoicing, that sacred knowledge and feeling of the magnificence of here and now, that vibrant health and abundance that are the Truth of my being, to everyone I encounter.  I bring that rejoicing to all with whom I cross paths.  I am the expression of that perfect, sacred rejoicing.

And I am deeply thankful.  I rejoice in and from that deep thankfulness.

And in that deep gratitude and rejoicing, I simply know that all is well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well, because this word is manifest in God right now.

And SO it IS!